The present invention relates to a new and distinct cultivar of Echinacea plant, botanically known as Echinacea purpurea, and hereinafter referred to by the name ‘Red Baron’.
The new Echinacea plant is a product of a planned breeding program conducted by the Inventor in Boskoop, The Netherlands. The objective of the breeding program is to develop new freely flowering Echinacea plants with unique inflorescence forms and attractive ray and disc floret coloration.
The new Echinacea plant originated from a cross-pollination conducted by the Inventor in 2001 in Boskoop, The Netherlands of two unnamed proprietary selections of Echinacea purpurea, not patented. The new Echinacea plant was discovered and selected by the Inventor as a single flowering plant from within the progeny of the stated cross-pollination grown in a controlled environment in Boskoop, The Netherlands in 2003.
Asexual reproduction of the new Echinacea plant by divisions in a controlled environment in Boskoop, The Netherlands since 2003 has shown that the unique features of this new Echinacea plant are stable and reproduced true to type in successive generations.